What are the chances that professors who have ascended to the top of the academic ladder through corrupt practices will uphold high standards of ethics and integrity?

In a recent editorial in the scientific journal Genes, Genomes, Genetics, the editor-in-chief, a professor at the University of Florida with a Scopus h-index of 45, highlights a critical but often overlooked point: citations are the primary way we recognize members of the global scientific community. Consequently, academics with no citations—or only a shockingly low number, including some full professors—are effectively excluded from this community, exposed as impostors. https://academic.oup.com/g3journal/article/14/7/jkae102/7709035

This situation raises a crucial question: can we reasonably expect those who have reached the highest academic ranks through nepotism or corruption to uphold the principles of ethics, merit, and intellectual integrity? More pressing still: shouldn’t the scientific community assume responsibility for identifying and confronting such individuals—through measures such as professional boycotts or by excluding them from editorial boards, funding panels, and other positions of academic influence?

In my country, I've noticed that some academics achieve full professorships through nepotism or political connections, while top young scholars are forced to emigrate to other countries to secure such positions. This issue is not unique to my country; a few years ago, a study revealed rampant nepotism in Italian academia. These problems exist in many countries, not just in Southern Europe.

This prompted me to advocate, several years ago, that Portuguese professors without a minimum number of citations (a Scopus h-index lower than 10) should be dismissed for failing to produce relevant academic work. In 2021 and again in 2022, I compiled lists of full professors who had not produced a single paper with at least 150 citations on Scopus. Unsurprisingly, those named were not pleased.

PS - Not all citations hold the same value. Some citations are highly valuable, others have zero value (self-citations), and some (Google Scholar based) even have a negative impact. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2024/05/paper-how-to-exploit-chatgpt-for-large.html